Tijuana, Mexico, January 01, 2005

when one lives in a rigid and ruled world where educators are underpaid, politicians are overpaid, consumption passes for class, people can't tell the difference between quantity and quality, and your tax dollars bring wars to far-away lands where your friends live, a line has to be drawn. at the very least one must get high enough get a little perspective.

and drugs are often the only answer to questions as disturbing as those that float on the breeze of an average day.

once upon a time, not too long ago, rob, Stephanie and a friend of theirs who assisted in The Authorship of this article (i will refer to him, in this story, as The Author) went to mexico. they were on a quest to find things that their government up north did not want them to have. in fact, they were on a quest to find things that the government down south didn't want them to have, either.

The Author cannot remember who initiates the journey. it is probably Rob, a scarecrow junkie, mister silver-tongue devil who is more bored than the other two because he's older, stupider, and already too far gone to care about getting busted. but they have collected, by the time we find them, a small amount of money and off they go, crammed into one small, red pickup truck which Stephanie owns. she is a petite blonde uma-hilton type, and so she has things like trucks and sledgehammers around to make up for having a small clitoris. additionally, she's very nice and prides herself on being a nurse to the other two. she gives them small green pills that start the morning gently.

they drive for two hours. the trip from los angeles to the mexican border is a bland slide show of corporate logos, 12-lane freeways, scowling drivers, and traffic no faster than an a drizzle of year-old 10w-40. the rhythm of this slow and automated tedium is broken only by inconspicuous (though no less insidious) military bases on both land and sea, straddling the highway, colossus of rhodes, but patriotic.

by the time our heroes arrive at the border they are in a less than frivolous mood. it was, as Rob put it, "a long cop" .. a dreary drive to pick up illicits of whatever kind should be avoided under all circumstances. the process should be fueled by impulse and irrational action, not by measured multi-hour drives through military bases in a car that was far too small for three people to sit. after all, buying drugs is something risky, costly, and peurile so one should never allow one's self to think about what is happening at risk of realizing one's own idiocy. the moment one realizes what an idiot one is being is the moment one loses all spirit and courage. one must avoid these thoughts when possible. this is the secret to kindness, bravery, cruelty, love, murder, and all the other great activities of humanity. self-awareness creates hesitation, and is suicide. one must decide, and then continue as if there is no free will.

Stephanie, a blonde, is driving and so they take a very wrong turn. the plan was to walk in and collect their due, like caesar, then walk back across the border. rather walk tall than run the risk of driving. they rationalised it such that it would be more likely that dogs would smell drugs on the car than on a person. this was the reasoning.

but you must remember that while these three were trying to be reasonable, nothing they were doing made any sense at all, which was finally the main reason they were doing it.

that, and the empty vertigo of living.

the three of them park and step into a city that is not far from a standard american city named san diego. more people are bilingual, but otherwise it's a little less wealthy, and a little more active, than the american archetype up north. they take a taxi, they ask the taximan simple questions (he would have been a fine connection, they would realize only when he had driven away), and they step out onto a dusty sidewalk and take a look around.

the long walk begins, and the long cop continues .

our three heroes change and, like lycanthropes, needs arise. 'the long cop,' the long walk, the aggravation of the search, the irritation of having money in one's pocket, the feeling of incompleteness, the lonliness of friends and drugs, but not really friends, and not really drugs, and the final arrival, transformed these three relatively human beings into junk hawks. but finally they found what they had come for.

(it should be pointed out that it is safe to enter any strip bar in tijuana and ask for whatever you woud like, and it will be provided at the asked price.)

and thus they score.

as was mentioned, a line had to be drawn, and so they not only draw that line, but they begin frantically scribbling line after line. these three thirsty wayfarers, who had come out of the protestant deserts, are now free to do what they chose, so they quickly set about destroying themselves with four different substances. then, and there, in the club, while the quick-eyed club owner surveys the rapidly mounting damage.

the man at the bar is talking on the phone. surely, The Author thinks to himself, he's calling cops. we're three full idiots sitting here doing drugs and drinking and smoking and it would be so easy to bust us and then bribe us. if we're lucky. and he watches the man on the phone until the man on the phone watches him.

the world seems much bigger and much rougher than he remembered it feeling yesterday. he looks in the corners, away from the red and purple lights, where the crusted carpet corners soak up all the sparkle, where he can nearly see rats wringing their hands or insect-robot-cameras spying on them, recording their every move, and transmitting the information back to the CIA, the FBI, the PJR, the PJF, the SSP and every other federale that makes a living collecting bribes and migratory druggies from the underworld lairs of tijuana.

The Author sits next to Rob in the blue vinyl booth, soaking his mind in tequila, paranoia, and class-A drugs, getting shaky, and feeling insects squirm behind his eyes and sweaty palms and the taste of bromine in the back of his numb throat, which makes smoking all the more pleasurable. the bar is turning the orange of fall leaves.

an hour slides, only to fall on the floor alongside all of their drunk words that pile up around them, like fine music they have made, but none of it they care about. it is simply hanging out.

Stephanie is mostly nude, dancing to salsa backbeat with the other girls. they're on the stage, in front of the mirrors. they're dancing for each other. the men in the room are only the impetus. Rob's ex-wife was a dancer for years and so he doesn't care. The Author is too concerned with drugs, imagining getting busted (the door being kicked in, and then kicked in again, and again, and each time a dozen mexican ninja-cops armed to the tits cart them to an idling van outside, sending them to a decade of doom in a tijuana poke). and Stephanie is having a gyrating fine time and doing the predictable things; opening her mouth, rubbing her ass on the pole, throwing her blonde cables from side to side, waving her hands in the air. though the place could hold 200 people it is empty and clogs nostrils with stale beer and clorox. there are only eight people in the bar, counting the bartender (who is still on the phone), and the three gringos and so Rob and The Author sit and suck on tequila while Stephanie and the other chiquitas squirm around and pluck nipples and pull panties down and grab the pole, making self-indulging dummies of themselves. nobody objects. the youngest, round one jumps around madly, like a fat, hairless rabbit, all stomach and tits. her boyfriend, a huge hairy oaf with a belly that drapes his belt, leers and stands up to paw at her, his hands numb clubs.

Rob's face grows dim and his mouth melts into his nose. he leans close.

"Doyou thinkthey spiked Stephanie'sdrink?" he mumbles.

"No." The Author now has numb horseteeth and his eyelids sink heavy to music from faraway. The tequila is briney, the bar is too bright and loud and far too slow for him, what being powered by resistance and hate.

Rob leans out to survey, then rolls on his ass cheek, landing on his elbow to finish his testimony.

"Doyou haveany moremoney?"

"What? What for? No. Maybe?"

"Let's getsome, more."

Rob watches the scuffle between humor, horror and temptation break out on The Author's face. blood drops from his head, down his neck, pools on his knees, and the drugs find the window of opportunity into his brain, like a flock of demons that have stormed a high church steeple, to lead him stumble swipe out the door. in search of new friends, and gear.

fourty minutes, now.

it's like melted glass, and burning smoke, cool water, incineration of a.. , a white china girl, and the lightbulb of blackstrap molasses. The Author no longer hos teeth, but chitinous gams, and hi stomach is tight wit glee from medieval torture and acidic throat time.

only one of the 3girls dances. = two are gone. only one gut suits himself on the table, and she must have gotten sex with him, she's sitting on'i lap, they both wear clothes, highschool dry-humpie, the bartender is on the phone.

Rob and Author spim in in into booth and cigarette light lips to curl with smokey teq, Stephanie pissing, they figure, gone but maybe steelhide, she's couragorgeous.

author, searching mission style, hunch and lurches hallway dark crampish backcorners, the minotaur of matzatl, spins and there!s a creepyman with jaw, bouncer could be, though he's not cop, and the dime-tooth flashing smile rises from the dark like shark from on deep, pistil in chilly, where them fucking rats live, and he, waggin his finger in the air, at author, will not snarl back without a fight and looking over his shoulder there's no sun or ra1n. did he lift hand against intent, did he?

but Donde esta la chiquita?

he repeats and again, tryng to find er. the man oints at ap curtain.

pull back like a kimono or skinflick this man's curtain don move, don swing, onle sway open to show the gangle ass threesome. STEFANNY! HERE 3 fuckers in a horror show what with this movie going in his skull, clakkety smack black tar & bask grey in blacklight inside the 3 naked bodies stafanny's hair on woman's knees feating her pie, the man licking stephaniass somewhere the little hand grips the fatboy's handle of life. slurping and zits on his ass, it ain't nice, stinking as bad as the gutter butter out side, but here the velvet sofa and she give him a helping hand, they wiggle and oink and sweat stink and moan. grate belch of ass and belch of tequil and morning breathers moaning again. goddam stickyshow.

too rich to see and smell, shat full like this peopshow, but in the face, sick what.

The Author does not roll shis eyes. they roll hi s.holds the curtain for gravity and lunch insidedown. this scene, what is this is the virgin and saint anne, 1510 - that particularly triangular composition so perfectly executed by daVinci of the baptist with his mommy, and mary. toogood this scene, all white skin black empty. where is his goddam camera , or? larceny, lies and hellfire but the hardware is digital, and blur he thinks, then his fingers feels some thin thick wet on the back of his neck maybe gas or blood and the floor slams him hard in the temple so he finds his knees and stands slow, hears laugh and before climbing aft again to laugh it off isself like rain, 'e pulls at the curtain sagain to see what them 3 porn stars with no audience do.

Stephanie pants-around-the-ankles of the fat girl obliging spreadleg jiggling with confulsionmeanwhile giving the guy to her left that wild file helping hand his teeth spin sharp bleu in the small black room ;; ;; ;; razors falling out of his skull like hailstones shoved into 'is face.

they're not moving Auth sways in the doorway wit no choie, chak "HEY Time to go!"
and now the three listen fast to he & he clapz them hands to break up this mess for God on a stick needs no redeemer in the fat pissass of teq in mexcal way.

"HEY!" he sey
and them three litl gobblers jump culp able to moo reachin for pans n shirz

"Let's GO!" lambast shet n'pissed off like this.

the hand on shoulder tis ole dimestore tooth now his escort and the step down back to the bar, clorox creeping up his throat now but that's good and cool cause it wakes im up a little, that booth is over here there there here is robs face and he sidesteps the table elbow (his head aches) : time to gather some control as there are now officially Other People involved in the fray and since he's out of the hallway he can be seen. he blinks hard and swallows.

who is this escort guy with the teeth, anyway?

drugs are about discipline. it's physical philosophy.

okay, here is the booth, here is Rob. okay, we'll make it fine.

what the fuck, Stephanie's gonna get cooties eating coochies in tijuana. The Author looks at Rob and tries to explain what happened, but only helium balloons, zeppelins, and hot air balloons escape his mouth. his tongue lays like a dog and his jaw comes unhinged.

Rob points to the new dancer, this one a skinny professional with hips like a trans-sex comes out to gyrate. he's doing better than The Author. he can point. she expects money, however, and that seems to interest Rob and make her worthy.

"Sorry, guys. Let's go." penitent Stephanie is standing over the table, the fun is drained gone, their sex scandal ruined by the impatient Author with the hairy belly man and the fatty rabbit girl leering and wiping cum off her mouth.

hairy belly steps over to Rob (also drooling on himself, reclining like a roman in his booth), and says, like a football fan, "Thanks, man. I really wanted to just say hi and thank you guys." and shakes Rob's hand hard enough to bounce his elbow. then he shake The Author's hand. then he leaves, awkward saunter to the door.

Rob and The Author look at each other then look at their hands. Rob picks up a napkin.

the world outside is dark now. night is draped over everything.

there are footsteps, and shoes, and curbs to navigate until the car door is opened and Stephanie drives to the border as the night gathers overhead and lights come on like flies feeding off the great carcass of tijuana. and that is all there is to tell.

Note: since fudging on the date of my colorado article i'm continuing my dereliction. the names have been changed to protect the guilty.